By Andy Lund
Ed note - This is the eleventh installment of a multi-part series by Andy Lund on his first year of cruising on board Resolution , the Nordhavn 46 he took delivery of in February 2004.
The ICW in Georgia and South Carolina
Thursday April 14th we crossed the Florida/Georgia line, having skipped Jacksonville, and moored that evening in the quaint old Georgia town of St Mary’s. By now the scenery had become more interesting. The ICW channel wound along rivers flanked with grassy marshes and treed islands, remote from civilization for the most part. St Mary’s, off the main channel about two miles, had a broad central street running down to the water and lined with big trees and old homes, some converted to B&Bs and shops. We had an “all you could eat” shrimp dinner at Seagulls, a restaurant, bar and hotel which appeared to date from the late 1800s. The dockmaster at Lang’s Marina was a delightful old gentleman who stayed late to help us in, and couldn’t have been more pleasant. We needed his help, as the current was running almost two knots and eddying. I didn’t make one of my best landings.
Friday and Saturday we stayed in Brunswick, another old Georgia town, and an active commercial port, with big car carriers coming up St. Simons Sound to discharge. For the past four days the weather has been sunny, crisp and cold, with a stiff north wind – about 20 knots – so staying on the ICW instead of running outside on the Atlantic, has been a good choice. Seas Sunday April 17th were 12 to 15 feet offshore, with a deep low pressure off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. No more Florida heat and humidity. We even had to switch to long pants and sweatshirts!
Staying in the twisting channel has required constant attention. In some places shoaling left the depth under our keel at about four feet, and the average has been ten to 15 feet. The channel markings are excellent, but they require constant vigilance. The “Waterways Guides” (for Florida, for Georgia to Delaware, and for New Jersey through Maine, have proven invaluable, both for anchorage and marina information and for piloting notes along the ICW itself. They’re updated annually, and well worth the $40 each one costs.
Sunday evening, April 17th, finds us anchored in Warburg Creek, behind St Catherine’s Island, about 25 miles south of Savannah, Georgia. The south entrance to the creek, from the ICW, shows four feet of water on the chart, but we passed over at high tide with about eight feet under our keel – more than enough. The anchorage is flanked by grassy marshes on the west and the tree covered island on the east, so it’s very sheltered, very quiet and has the evening sun. It’s an idyllic spot, far from civilization, except for a few houses and a dock with a fishboat tied up about 500 yards south of us. Only challenge was the swarms of sand gnats – little tiny biting bugs, who left an itch behind. They were worst at dawn and dusk, but seem to love the grassy marshes of Georgia, at least at this time of year.
Monday morning we moved north along the ICW, now very smooth as the north wind had subsided. The water got a bit thin at points, with only five feet under the keel, and a very narrow channel to follow. We became experts at following ranges – places in the channel where you lined up two large vertical panels, one behind the other, to stay on course. Midday we began to hear chatter on the radio about the Causton Bluff bridge. Seems a dump truck had hit it while it was just being raised, and had done some damage, so the bridge was closed, with no estimated opening time. Luckily it was ten miles beyond the Isle of Hope Marina, near Savannah, where we had reservations for the next two nights. By 130 PM we were tied securely at Isle of Hope, in front of a lovely row of old “ante-bellum” style houses surrounded by huge live oaks. The marina loaned us a car, and we drove in towards Savannah to find a grocery store, and a Barnes and Noble bookstore. Tuesday is the day we tour Savannah, about ten miles west of the marina.
Savannah is a lovely treed city high on a bluff on the south bank of the Savannah River, founded in the early 1700s by a British entrepreneur, Lord Oglethorpe. It developed on rice and indigo (used for blue dye) growing, thriving until the Civil War. Spared by General Sherman on his march to the sea after burning Atlanta, it remained impoverished well into the 20th century, so the lovely old homes were preserved for the most part. Oglethorpe laid the city out on a grid work of town squares. Twelve remain, as green treed garden “lungs” in the city. It’s a great walking city. We spent a good part of the day wandering around, by foot and by car. The maritime museum was quite interesting, with a model of the “Savannah”, the first steamship to cross the Atlantic, in 1837. In Savannah I just missed seeing my old friend Don Myers, who had flown down from Atlanta to have work done on the Gulfstream business jet he pilots. I'd known Don and Kathy from my days in Japan with the Air Force in the early 1980's. We talked on the phone, but our schedules wouldn't mesh.
Thursday the 20th we sailed out the Wilmington River and Wassaw Sound onto the Atlantic, then up off the Savannah River mouth into Port Royal Sound and Beaufort (pronounced “Bewfort”), South Carolina. This short ocean passage avoided the still closed Causton Bluff Bridge. The sea was benign, with long low rollers and light winds, but it gave Zack a good opportunity to run along on a straight course, instead of following the perpetually winding ICW. Coming up Port Royal Sound we paralleled the US Marine Corps Recruit Depot – Parris Island. We docked for three nights right in downtown Beaufort, which has done a nice job redeveloping its waterfront. It was an old rice and indigo trading town, like Savannah, and fell on hard times after the Civil War. The Marine recruit depot and adjoining air station have helped its economy, as has an influx of retirees seeking warmer climes.
A pocket cruise ship, the “American Glory” was tied up to the town sea wall. We met a couple of its crew, Bryan Moman and Victoria Allen. They came aboard “Resolution” for a drink the afternoon of the 22nd. We had dinner one night in a nice place on the water called “Panini’s”. Good pasta and oven fired pizza, but the “she-crab” soup was superb. The restaurant was in a redeveloped bank building – the old kind with high ceilings and a very formal entry.
The weather turned windy and cold as we headed out of Beaufort for Charleston, along the ICW. We had planned to anchor half-way, but all the anchorages were too exposed for the forecast 30 knots of wind with possible thunderstorms, so we pressed on to the Buzzards Roost Marina, in the southern suburbs of Charleston.
The morning of Sunday the 24th we moored at the Carolina Yacht Club in Charleston, after four docking attempts were frustrated by the wind and current. The club is almost on the Battery, the south tip of Charleston, and was across East Bay Street from Stolls Alley, where my mother lived with her parents in 1944 when she married my father. At the time my grandfather was a Navy captain commanding an anti-submarine sector during World War II. Zack and I walked all over the old part of Charleston that sunny cold Sunday, admiring the many well-preserved ante-bellum homes.
Monday we rented a car and drove out to Middleton Gardens and Magnolia Plantation. Both were rice plantations on the Ashley River, up from Charleston, and both have lovely gardens dating to the mid-1700s. We rode a horse drawn work wagon around Middleton, a great way to see the outlying parts of the plantation along the river. We even found an alligator sunning himself in a creek off the river. Middleton’s formal English style gardens were quite a contrast to the swampy informality of most of Magnolia. Neither great house survived the Civil War. Remnants of the Middleton house, burned by Northern troops (since Arthur Middleton had signed the Confederate Articles of Succession) were still standing. Seemed not to make any difference that Arthur Middleton’s great grandfather Henry had been a signer of the Declaration of Independence 90 years earlier.
Over the next few days we wound our way north along the ICW, in cold, blustery weather, stopping in Georgetown and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and Southport, North Carolina. Saturday the 30th we arrived at the Seapath Marina in Wrightsville Beach, just east of Wilmington, where my cousin Cary Paynter and her husband David live. Sunday we borrowed a car from the marina, found the mall and a big Barnes & Noble bookstore, and went grocery shopping. Monday at noon Cary came and picked us up for lunch, then loaned us her car. We drove into Wilmington, took a look at the Battleship “North Carolina” and drove around the old part of town. That evening we had dinner at Cary and David’s house on the banks of Dawson Creek, just off the ICW south of Wrightsville Beach. I had a great time catching up on news of many of my cousins.
Tuesday the 3rd of May we headed north again. The ICW by this time was becoming rather boring and tedious, with lots of dull scenery and winding shallow channels. At mile 263 (about 50 miles north of Wrightsville Beach), the ICW struck back, as we grounded in the mud. After a few failed attempts to back off the sand bar, I swallowed my pride and radioed “Towboat US”. They showed up a half hour later in a 20 foot Boston Whaler with two 225 hp Yamaha outboards, and yanked us free in five minutes. That evening we stopped at the Swan Point Marina, just south of the Camp LeJeune Marine base. All our GPS instruments failed there, apparently due to jamming by the Marines.
The GPS jamming had ceased the next morning as we sailed north, spending the night in Beaufort (pronounced “Boe-fort”), North Carolina, on the north side of Camp LeJeune. It was still cold and windy, with gusts to 40 knots at the docks that evening. Thursday the 5th we crossed Pamlico Sound in 35 knot winds against three to four foot seas. Rather turbulent since the sound is very shallow, and we had to be careful to stay within the marked channel. We spent the next two nights at the River Forest Marina in Bellhaven. We’d only planned one night, but the wind kept blowing 35 to 40 knots and the rain came down in torrents. No point in going out across Albemarle Sound, a shallow but exposed 15 mile crossing. We were also concerned that the Alligator River swing bridge would be closed due to the high winds.
Saturday the 7th dawned cold, crisp and sunny, but still breezy. We set out north again early, and when we reached the Alligator River bridge found that indeed it had been closed the previous day, with gusts reaching 60 knots. After a very long day – 85 miles – we reached Coinjack, North Carolina, just south of the Virginia border, where we spent the night. We started the next morning at six, to pick up the north flooding tide. After a series of waits for bridges to open south of Norfolk, at noon we passed through the only lock on the ICW, at Great Bridge. It’s big, with a 600 foot long, 72 foot wide chamber, but only a three to four foot lift, up to tide water ten miles south of Norfolk. By 3PM we were tied up in the Bluewater Marina in Hampton, Virginia, across Hampton Roads from Norfolk. The passage through Norfolk was quite interesting, what with all the Navy ships – frigates, destroyers, transports, supply ships, helicopter carriers, and fleet carriers – tied up along the way.
The 1,243 miles of the IntraCoastal Waterway, from Key West to Norfolk, were interesting, boring, fascinating, tedious, challenging and historical. Candidly, doing it once is quite enough. I’m much happier on the big, blue ocean, with some water under the keel. Running all day long with five to ten feet of water under the boat, constantly adjusting course – indeed standing at the wheel for hours at a time – got rather old, very quickly. We certainly enjoyed the history and the pleasant towns along the way. It was disappointing to not be able to anchor out more, but there weren’t many good anchorages, and the weather, apparently the coldest spring in many years, wasn’t helpful.
Today, Monday May 9th, as I write this, Chesapeake Bay is wide, calm and blue, with 40 feet of water under our keel. There is a light north wind, the temperature is 70 degrees, the sky is sunny and Zack has finally been able to work on his tan again. Can’t have a pale-faced California boy! We’ll be at Point Lookout Marina, Maryland, tonight, at the mouth of the Potomac River, after a 60-mile run up from Hampton. Washington DC, the head of navigation on the Potomac, is 96 miles to the northwest.
Tuesday the 10th was another pretty sunny day as we headed up the Potomac another 30 miles to Colonial Beach, Virginia. The wind picked up from the east, stirring up a pretty good chop on the river. The marina was just at the mouth of the cove at Colonial Beach, so the waves curved around inside, making for rolly conditions at the dock. My old friends Tom and Kathy Shubert came down from Washington so Tom could join us for the run up to our Nation’s capital the next day. Tom and Kathy and I were stationed together at Yokota Air Base, outside of Tokyo for three years in the early 1980s. He had just retired from the Air Force as a Colonel in the Pentagon. Kathy took us up into the town for a grocery store run, then headed back to the Virginia suburbs of Washington.
Wednesday the 11th, another pretty sunny day, we completed the journey up the Potomac, passing Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home, standing proud on the Virginia shore, then Fort Washington, on the Maryland side. An old brick fort, it was built (if I have my history right) to protect Washington before the War of 1812. Obviously it didn’t help, since the British came over land from the Baltimore area, taking Washington and burning the presidential mansion – now the White House – so painted to cover up the soot stains.
Reaching Alexandria, we passed under the Wilson bridge, which carries Interstate 95 across the Potomac. It is now a mammoth construction site, with two new six lane bridges under construction. The channel has been shifted, with huge floating cranes blocking the normal passage. The Potomac itself is a broad river, one to two miles across in the upper reaches and up to three miles across nearer Chesapeake Bay. But most of it is five to ten feet deep, with a narrow 25 foot deep channel winding its way north. It’s all very well charted and marked with buoys, but definitely requires paying attention. We moored at the Capital Yacht Club, at the head of the Washington Channel, between the park on Haines Point and Fort McNair, home of the National War College (sorry –“Defense University”– to be politically correct).
